Beautiful, Beautiful, Beautiful

Today was SUCH a beautiful day. Well, it was really just an extension of a really wonderful night, into today. Last night my sister and I dressed up as fairies (she was a vampire-bitten fairy, and I was just a pretty fairy) and went to an awesome raw food pot-luck and then partied with about 5 other people, 2 of whom we'd just met, well into the night. We sat by a fire and played the guitar and sang and told real scary stories and laughed and hugged and....oh it was just wonderful!! And then today, we woke up in the late morning, looking up to the beautiful bubble-like lights strung across my sister's ceiling and all of her amazing plants that make her tiny place so full of life and green. The air was perfect and warm, and it was so beautiful to wake up next to my awesome sister and just pounce on and cuddle with each other for a while :) We made hot cereal and sat out on her porch and just soaked in the beauty of her magical garden---

I have to take one second to pause and try to describe my sister's garden. She lives on a normal street in Sugarhouse with cute little houses all around, but hers you enter by way of an old, creaky wooden gate in a wooden fence which hides her house from the rest of the street. Inside the gate there are aspen trees and pine trees and a willow tree that are so alive and climbing higher and higher each day. There is a small fountain on the side of the path leading up to the house from the gate and its gentle trickle is so pleasant and makes the whole place seem like an oasis of quiet and tranquility. Now that it's fall, leaves and pine needles carpet the ground and the air is moist and smells of rain. Mmmm it's just breathtaking, and my attempt to describe its beauty doesn't even come close to doing it justice.  --

Back to breakfast :) So we sat on the steps at the head of the path through the front yard and listened to the birds and breathed in the fragrance of the coming rain. We ate our apple, oat, and raisin cereal out of these thick, deep pottery bowls, which just made the food even better. Wow....what a beautiful morning.

We then took quite the adventurous walk through the woods that are just a jaunt up the street from her house! I couldn't believe such a beautiful place could exist right in the middle of all these houses. It reminded me starkly of Robert Frost's poem that goes "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood;" the whole wood was filled with trees that had bright yellow leaves and the ground was thick with the fallen gold. In my tall black boots and my red pea coat I felt like quite the fall adventurer! We ran and kicked our way through the leaves and admired the little stream winding its way through the wood. I could literally spend all day there and never get bored or want to leave. It was a dream.

Then came the best part of all: I DYED MY HAIR RED!!!!! (pictures soon to come) It was sooooo fun doing that with my sister, who is so ready to take part in any new adventure and she was so great and supportive in this first time experience for me. Neither of us had even dyed hair before and she was so brave to just get her hands goopy and slather it all on. It was so fun, and it turned out sooooo great!! I am deeply, deeply in love with this red hair; I think it was the color I was always meant to have. So now begins my "red butterfly phase." I've been in the white one for quite some time and now I am ready for some fire and some sass!

The rest of the evening passed quite relaxingly in going to see our oldest sister and her daughter, whom we took Trick-or-Treating for a little while and then we made soup and just spent some good time together.

I love my family so much. I really couldn't have asked for a better Halloween. Hooray!!